Favorite post apocalyptic or dystopian future novel?

I'm a fan of this type of Science Fiction and to be honest I'm looking for titles to read myself. My personal favorites are 1984, A Canticle for Leibowitz and Brave New World

Noir by K.W. Jeter.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Lucifer's hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Swan Song by Robert McCammon

The Stand by Stephen King

Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is definitely the fave but others lesser favorites are:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and I second Canticle for Leibowitz.

The recent The Pesthouse by Jim Crace and The Road by Cormac McCarthy were pretty good also - although the things they have to say are more subtle than, say, the Atwood or the Bradbury.

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin is much better than any of Atwood's dry patter in my humble opinion. (though i did enjoy A Handmaid's Tale when i was in Grade 9 -- mostly for the titillating sex scenes, though surely that was not her intent, but adolescent hormones have a mind of their own... Building a novel around one conceit just seems insufficient. Though admittedly i highly enjoyed Atwood's attack on ultra-religiousity and the feminists at the time of writing.)

In terms of speculative fiction Le Guin is a superior Womyn (so hard to write that 'word' without laughing hysterically??) writer?

I wonder if Ishiguro's Never Let me Go would qualify as Dystopia? (perhaps a better example where the single conceit or 'point' is well-hidden so the novel's momentum remains unhindered?)

This is a wonderful question (though of course raises the implied question of What is a Dystopia?) and most of the obvious novels already noted, but I'm sure a few surprises will be mentioned. (i'm already scanning my shelves for more possible examples and favourites.)

My personal favourite is Nineteen Eighty-Four, with Brave New World and We racing for second place (much already noted about We's influence on 1984, and Orwell himself admitted that). These are the 'grand-daddies' of modern dystopias (essentially creating the need for the term in literary studies/theory, following it's first usage in English Political/philosophical debate) which explains their special place in many readers' hearts (and the fact they used to be, excepting We, part of the high school curriculum).

For more recent examples I would add the 'classic' Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (aka Bladerunner) by Philip K. Dick, and the early novels of William Gibson starting with the innovative Neuromancer; though some might argue these types of novels are not within the formal range of 'Dystopian Literature'?

As for 'Post-Apocalyptic' that opens the door to hundreds of other novels...

The question I have for kjrjr7811 is whether you are seeking something fun and light (pure 'adventure' story for example) with which of course there is nothing wrong, or something a bit 'deeper', political/philosophical, subtler (to quote avaland), that sneaks up to deliver the visceral punch?

For Post-Apocalyptic you might enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias Trilogy. The first novel The Wild Shore was quite fun (more adventure) but i did lose interest after the second one, The Gold Coast since by then we are lead into the third novel's essentially Utopian presentation. Ultimately a matter of personal taste of course.

Ridley Walker though I'm not sure that it is SF?

(Condor given your posts on the other thread about purity of language, this might not be a book that you'd enjoy)

Spares ? In some sense all of Michael Marshall Smith's work.

Jeff Noon's Pixel juice which is a collection of short stories set in 'Madchester'
This isn't apocalyptic and possibly not dystopian enough though.

One could possibly consider the very excellant Cyteen to be dystopian. It certainly isn't apocalyptic, but depending on your view of humanity it might count. It is certainly worth reading!

Well Riddley Walker did get nominated for a Nebula and did win the Campbell Memorial Award. So the SF community thought it counted. Some of Russell Hoban's other books are of interest to the SF/Fantasy reader but none fit this topic.

Most of my faves have been mentioned already so I will just add the world depicted by Gwyneth Jones in her Rock & Roll Reich books starting with the wonderful Bold As Love

A brief list of some of the major Post-Apocalyptic novels, presented without comment:

Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank
On the Beach, by Nevil Shute
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

An old-school classic is The earth abides by George R. Stewart.

A couple that don't get a lot of exposure are:
Mister Touch by Malcolm Bosse and The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch ... the latter was especially striking.

The Postman by David Brin was better than I expected.

And although I haven't read it yet, The children of men by P.D. James might be worth a look.

Kromes, tell me about Mister Touch. I was a great fan of Bosse's The Warlord...

I enjoyed The Children of Men being both a P.D. James fan and a science fiction reader. It's been a long time since I read the book and I have yet to see the movie but I'm under the impression that some things have been changed...

avaland: it's been years since I've read it, so I can't remember a lot of details, but it takes place after some kind of virus kills off most of the world ... a group of survivors from NYC gets together and heads west to find a better place to live ... it sounds cliched, but it wasn't ... it's the only Bosse book I've read, so I can't compare it anything else he's done, but I definitely recommend it.

>7 Condor: "The question I have for kjrjr7811 is whether you are seeking something fun and light (pure 'adventure' story for example) with which of course there is nothing wrong, or something a bit 'deeper', political/philosophical, subtler (to quote avaland), that sneaks up to deliver the visceral punch?"

Wow thank you for such a wonderful answer to my question! To answer yours; I am looking for both the light and fun and the deeper works. I like both and enjoy reading popular fiction as well as the great classics.

Like you 1984 was what hooked me. I first read it in 1983 when I was in High School. Everyone was talking about the book then and I wanted to read it before "The Year" itself arrived.

Since then, I have looked tor dystopian novels whenever I could. Along the way I happened upon the post-apocalyptic genre and found I liked it as well. I know those two should probably be separated but I have linked them in my mind.

If you're interested in older stuff, The Bright Phoenix is worth a look of you can find it: rather along the lines of Brave New World.

-9- Reading_Fox
Ridley Walker though I'm not sure that it is SF?

(Condor given your posts on the other thread about purity of language, this might not be a book that you'd enjoy)

I have enjoyed many of Hoban's works, and Ridley Walker is a good example you mention. Though we are discussing Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic novels, so perhaps not necessary to attach the SF genre tag to it? Some of his novels certainly straddle the line between SF and 'literature', and are enjoyed both by pure SF genre readers, and also in academia (regularly featured in Introduction to Literature courses as well classes specifically tackling SF/Speculative Fiction/Fantasy). Andyl does a good job of listing examples of support by the SF 'academy'. (also Cyteen is definitely worth reading whether we call it Dystopian or not.)

On 'Purity of Language' I hope you have not misinterpreted one of my previous posts? by no means do I champion a specific method of writing that sticks to a 'pure' notion of English. Any intelligent/creative handling or manipulation of language that aptly serves a work's purpose should never be criticized for lacking or underming any supposed 'purity'. (Unless you mean my sardonic reference to Orwell's newspeak where i was trying to support the freedom of speech/debate without a regulatory body for language?)
A Clockwork Orange might qualify as Dystopian, and certainly Burgess takes inventive liberties with his imagined future slang? (how i wonder would he react to the vernacular forms in our times? surpassing his worse nightmares?) Any work tackling a near or distant future would of necessity have to extrapolate for linguistic changes/variations? It is a fine line to manage since at the same time an author would not want to completely alienate contemporary readers, or include a glossary as long as the main work itself?

Has anyone yet read The Book of Dave by Will Self?

The Children of Men is a good example mentioned by others, and though i have not seen the film version yet I've heard it is well handled and the cinematography superb. Avaland is probably right there have been changes in the film version, but that is quite commonplace and only a few films stay 100% true to the novel/story on which they are based?

I was also quite happily surprised to see Richard Matheson's I Am Legend listed above -- a book I highly enjoyed -- and definitely it would fall under the category of post-apocalyptic (Stephen King, i think, once mentioned he loved this book and perhaps we see influences in his own work?)

Kjrjr7811: you are welcome and I think you will get a hefty serving of good answers to your initial query. I have the feeling you will end up with more books on your plate you you can handle at once and keep you busy for years! I'm also looking forward to some good titles/suggestions i have not previously read.

Myopic Bookworm: for Bright Phoenix do you mean Elwood's novel? I think that was only written in the last decade or is there an earlier work with the same name? or do you mean Bradbury's short story of the same name which is thought to be the basis for Fahrenheit 451? and later the longer version The Fireman. ooops i just clicked on your tag and see you reference the novel by Harold Mead (I haven't read that one, do you know when it was published)? funny how people keep using the same titles, etc.?? but we might have to give initial credit to Bradbury as his short story was writtne in the 1940s...

I have a question about We. I have heard of this as a source for 1984 but have never read it. I'd like to but I'm encountering several different English translations (Its a pity I don't speak Russian). Does anyone have favorite translation? Or failing that, is there a translation I should avoid?

Thanks to you all for the response.

I read the Penguin Classics edition of We last year and found it worked nicely. I haven't read any other translations of it, so I have nothing to compare it to. There is some brief mention of it influencing 1984 in the introduction.

I'm fond of Emergence by David R. Palmer.

I like several of the books already mentioned (especially The Dispossessed), but here are a couple of other good post-apocalyptics:

The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper--one of my favorite books ever. I just re-read it a few months ago, and I would have been happy to re-read it again immediately after I was done.

Califia's Daughters by Leigh Richards--this was an interesting take on a world with a disease that kills a majority of the men while leaving the women alone.

-18-
Regarding We, there are several new translations just published in the last few years so that can cause some confusion. This is something i also fret about, concerned if i am reading the 'best' translation and i go through this everytime i read an author in translation.. I like the Penguin Edition for one of the covers (i know that is shallow but i'm being honest), but since i don't speak Russian cannot attest to the quality of translation. The most recent 2006 translation did receive some mixed reviews among critics so it's hard to know whose authority to follow (the same question is being raised for much of Kafka's works which had relied on old translations for a long time.)

But, since it is such a short book (and the copyright expired anyway?), you may want to access a free copy of a fairly recent translation online (i saved it right to my computer):

http://crispytomato.net/zamyatin_we.txt
The full text (Mirra Ginsburg translator)

I'm not sure if it would be necessarily considered the 'source' for Orwell's work though certainly it was an influence and Orwell had read it. Most definitely i think it is the source (among others) for George Lucas's film THX 1138.

>22 Condor:

Thanks Condor. Great advice. BTW I didn't say I thought it was THE source only a source. Apparently Orwell stated that it had influenced him. Perhaps the word "influence" would have been a better word choice on my part.

I loved A Canticle for Leibowitz - much better than 1984 or Brave New World. That might have to do with the circumstances they were read under. Having a broader frame of reference within a genre tends to add to the pleasure of reading a great work within it, in my experience.

Nick Sagan Edenborn, Idlewild (haven't read the concluding novel of the trilogy Everfree) is about a future where only a few genetically engineered post humans survive due to a disease. They have been created by the dying, and raised by machines to repopulate earth when the disease has been erased.
Tricia Sullivan Lethe ruined world, mutated human races emerge to contend with the new living conditions while humans only survive in artificially created environments.
Ursula Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven Earth keeps getting destroyed only to be saved by the dreams of the protagonist - although the earth at the end isn't dystopian, so I don't know if it counts.
Emma Bull The Bone Dance mix of fantasy and science fiction.
Gene Wolfe Claw of the Conciliator, Shadow of the Torturer, Citadel of the Autarch, The Sword of the Lictor - I consider the whole series dystopian science fiction, although it could be classified as fantasy as well.
If we include the fantasy genre I'd like to mention Martha Wells City of Bones as a fantastic dystopia.

Ah, amberwitch beat me to mentioning Gene Wolfe's Book of the new Sun. I can't recommend this highly enough. I don't consider it dystopian, but it is certainly post-apocalyptic, and a great story that bears multiple readings. Wolfe uses the tropes of fantasy but everything is explainable as technology, e.g., the protagonist carries a sword which is not magical but simply the product of sublime engineering. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's richly rewarding to the reader who is willing to work a little. IMHO this long novel, which first appeared over 25 years ago, remains the high-water mark for literary SF. The sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, is also great fun, and casts a new light on the whole work.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
The Futurological Cngress by Stanislaw Lem
Feed by M.T. Anderson

What would qualify as post-apocalyptic? Which apocaplypse?
What is a dystopia, anyway? Don't we already live there?
;-)

I'd say most of Neal Asher's books would qualify, and Cowl most of all.
Also the early novels by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, like Neoaddix and Lucifer's dragon (and ReMix).

I'd like to mention Effinger's Budayeen suite as well - When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the sun & The exile kiss + the kindred Arabesque suite by Jon C Grimwood - Pashazade, Effendi & Felaheen.

All these are clear favourites of mine (OK, it will be a while before I read/reread anything by Neal Asher but still...)

I also second the books by Ursula Le Guin and William Gibson that already got mentioned.

I have to join the crowd on A Canticle for Liebowitz - and I read it so long ago I don't even own a copy, I checked it out of the library. But the story and the ideas inherent to the story have stayed with me. Another book that comes close to this category but perhaps not quite and is still a great favorite of mine is Stand on Zanzibar - I lost my original copy and took years to replace it but the future world described there-in shares many similarities to the world we now know.

Robert A. Mosher

I also highly enjoyed A Canticle for Liebowitz which i read many years ago as standing head and shoulders above most of the 'SF' books i could get my hands on at the time (though i disagree that it's "much better" than 1984; of course that is my personal opinion/taste, but really the two books are on different levels altogether).
But i seem to recall there was a sequel of sorts that was not as good? I can't remember the title right now... did anyone read that?

i'm now tempted to go back and re-read "Canticle".. ahh so little time so many books.

The follow-up to A Canticle for Leibowitz is called Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. I haven't read it myself so can't vouch for its quality.

Hi, Condor.; sorry, only just got back here. Yes, The Bright Phoenix is by Harold Mead, and as far as I know (COPAC) it was first published in 1955. I only came across it because the author's son gave me a copy of the Dutch translation, and I then found the original somewhere.

The thing I found interesting about The Children of Men was that the scenario was so similar to that of Greybeard, yet because P.D. James is a mainstream author, and Brian Aldiss is a typecast SF genre writer, her book was marketed a more-or-less mainstream and read by a much wider audience. It may also be a better-written book (the Aldiss has that slightly disorientating feel that SF authors seem to favour), but it typifies the SF-blindness of the general public and their high street booksellers. Clever Iain M. Banks gets around it by writing his post-apocalyptic A Song of Stone under his "mainstream" persona Iain Banks.

I really liked the first book in S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire trilogy. The other two were nice, but they were much less focused on the apocalypse (The Change) itself.

Someone's mentioned Stand on Zanzibar already, and it's excellent. A lot of Brunner's work could be called dystopian. Try The Sheep Look Up and The Jagged Orbit.

Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! probably fits the genre too. It's only mildly distopic, although the fact that it isn't too far removed from current conditions makes it a little more grim than it would otherwise seem.

The Sea and Summer by George Turner could probably be best described as dystopian with a sketchy post apocalyptic framing story. It's a good read. I think it was published with a different name in the US. (edited to add - I found it, Drowning Towers)

Oryx and Crake is probably the most disturbing book I've ever read in this genre.

I wanted to put in another vote for The Gate to Women's Country by Tepper. Although not perfect, it's really a thought-provoking story and tragic in the classical sense. I found myself still wrestling with the issues it raised even months later.

Some of my favorites have already been mentioned. I enjoyed S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire. The other two books in the trilogy had interesting points as well. The Stand by Stephen King is also one of my favorites. Some others that I have on my shelves (that I don't think have been mentioned yet) are:
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
Ariel by Steven Boyett
Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham
False Dawn by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Magic Time by Marc Scott Zicree
The Rift by Walter J. Williams

J.G. Ballard wrote several good apocolyptic books. The Drowned World is about global warming and was written 45 years ago. Others I have read are The Wind from Nowhere and The Burning World. His early years living through the apocolypse of WWII China in a Japanese prison camp evidently influenced his writing a good deal. Empire of the Sun made his fascination with the "End of the World" a little clearer.

Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country and Lathe of Heaven are good ones. Although many of Tepper's novels are post-apocalyptic. I also consider Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy to be dystopian.

#37 - I thought Lathe of Heaven was amazing! My son suggested it to me and literally could not put it down.

Another huge thumbs up for Lathe of Heaven ... I understand there's a movie version out there ... anyone see it?

And another very good novel that fits here is I who have never known men by Jacqueline Harpman.

I have not seen it, but I would love to! I'll have to look into it.

Lathe of Heaven was one of those books that left me speechless. I think I need to do a reread...soon!

#39: It's not bad for a television production made in 1980. It's finally on DVD although they had to substitute a cover version of "With a Little Help From My Friends" because the Beatles version was too expensive to license.

One book I do not see mentioned is Malevil by Robert Merle. As far as I am concerned the synopsis on Amazon does not do it justice.
I have a review of it on my review page if you are interested. It is one of the better books I've read. Definitely in my top 10.

Suzy Charnas' Walk to the End of the World is one of my favorite dystopias.

One of the things I love about it is as the books progress (4 in all) the characters move to rebuild society and have to deal with their roles in the dystopian culture before they can build what might therefore be a realistic utopia. Almost all who write utopian novels leave out the 'how do we make it so?" part through designing a series of calamities that sidestep the question... and I am fascinated by the question, so that bugs me!

The City Not Long After is a nice work by Pat Murphy with a San Francisco setting after a plague wipes out almost everyone. Lots of fun esp. if you live here

Pretty much the entire Pelbar Cycle by Paul O. Williams though i think my favorite is The Ends of the Circle. Awesome series alla bout Earth after a nuclear war. Basically humans are finally on the way back with tons of different cultures but with pretty much no knowledge about before for most of the groups but...

Though a pretty good YA book called The Girl Who Owned A City by O.T. Nelson is about life after everyone older than 12 dies from a disease.

I don't know if Century Rain counts. The Earth has been destroyed in a Nanocaust, but the survivors in orbital settlements aren't too dystopic, depending on your point of view. Its a good read anyway.

I saw the new TV-movie version of Lathe of Heaven. It had that kid from the film Witness, and a girl from The Cosby Show. It was o.k.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, mentioned in the first post, is a good dystopian/ apocalyptic future novel. I also enjoyed The Big Time, though I'm not sure if it qualifies.

I'll second Canticle for Liebowitz, We (I'd read an older translation in a college course on Utopian/Dystopian literature in the early-'70s and I understand the newer translation is truer to the original and I want to read it), 1984 (I'd read my parents' pulp cover paperback when I was in my teens and it bowled me over), and Gate to Women's Country which is my favorite of Tepper's books.

I'll add 2 YA books:
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien and
Wolf of Shadows (a novella, actually) by Whitley Strieber.

For those who enjoyed A Canticle for Leibowitz, I highly recommend This Is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow. Simultaneously hilarious and gut-wrenching, it's one of the finest accounts of apocalypse I've ever read.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham must surely be on the list. I've loved it and reread it many times since school.

I love City by Clifford Simak.

I really like M. K. Wren's Sword of the Lamb.

Even better Harry Harrison's To The Stars trilogy. Homeworld, Wheelworld, and Starworld.

I wouldn't say it's my absolute favorite, but Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon hasn't been mentioned yet and is quite good.

It's probably not technically SciFi but A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier, is a really great apocalypse story. Basically it is set in 2 worlds - There is a world full of everyone who has already died, but they only stay there so long as someone on Earth remembers them. However, in the "real" world everyone is dying from a virus so there is not many people left to remember anyone.

Here is a small list to add;

The earth Abides by George R. Stewart.
Alas Babylonand Mr Adam both by Pat Frank
Greybeard by Brain Aldiss
The New Madrid Run by Michael Reisig
Year Zero : a novel by Jeff Long
The first three are golden oldies the last two are fairly new.

I totally agree with Cateline, Malevil by Robert Merle is one of my all-time favorites.

If you include fantasy, Carole Berg's 'Flesh & Spirit' is the most atmospheric portrayal of the coming of a dark age that I've read recently.

Also, a children's book, 'Gathering Blue' by Lois Lowry. But don't expect any grand end-of-the-world special effects, it's a subtle portrayal of life in a fallen society.

There are a lot of great books listed here but my favorite post-apocalyptic novel seems to be missing: Wolf and Iron by Gordon R. Dickson.

I was 17 when I first read the handmaid's tale and it completely blew me away! After that 1984 and brave new world and I was hooked on dystopias. I seemed to have progressed into post-apocalyptic now and one of the first ones I read was On the Beach, which actually made me cry (I'm such a girl...) ^^

^ I love many of those you mention, especially 1984 and "On the Beach".

Have you tried Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents? They're more along the lines of The Handmaid's Tale, in terms of being not as far off from our present-day as something like Brave New World might seem.

The books 1984, the tripod trilogy starting with The White Mountains, Cosmic Contemplations, Planet of the Apes and Fahrenheit 451 are all great sci fi reads you can't go wrong with.

I would have read Butler's books before, but I had to wait for them to come of the reserve list at the library. It seems she's getting the popularity she's deserving. I plan to start reading them this week (I got my book arrived notice yesterday).

>62 amysisson:

I haven't, but I'll ad them to my wish list! Ah, so much to read, so little time...

Not my fave genre but Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is certainly worthy and I don't think anyone else has mentioned it.

I would second a listing from way back in the list Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood had an atmosphere that left me disturbed for days.

How about World War Z by Max Brooks? The style of the book made a riveting read about a virus that turns people into a familiar cliche...but how do the people survive.

Very surprised no one has mentioned Edgar Pangborn's Davy as one of the premier examples of post-apocalyptic works. And as far as dystopian works go, Bernard Wolfe's Limbo is a fine example, unhappily almost totally forgotten today.

Wow. What a great list of suggestions you have all made. I just recently joined LT and I am really thrilled each time I find one of these incredibly knowledgeable discussions.

I was wondering if anyone has run across a good post-oil novel. Dies the Fire is an interesting take on a world without energy in general but the type of novels that I was wondering about was one that explores the consequences of a world that is running out of fuel. It seems like it has at least as much chance of actually coming to pass as most of the other dystopian scenarios.

I want to second (and link) Edgar Pangborn's Davy.

#69 maybe neads a new thread but Earth grrr. touchstone by Brin is a very good book that covers the lack of oil. Not quite dystopian though.

It has been a long time since I read it, but This Perfect Day (touchstone not working) by Ira Levin was one of my favorite dystopian novels.

I join in recommending Earth Abides --- no "The" in the title. My neighbors, who are dipping their toes into SF (*smile*), just read it, and gave it rave reviews.

Cateline,

When I read Malevil I was rather new to the genre, so I've wondered if I'd still enjoy it. Your review has convinced me to put it on my list for a re-read.

#71 thanks. It is a small world. I just picked up a used copy of Earth awhile back and wasn't sure what it was about. That moves it up on my list for sure. After I have gotten a little more comfortable with the LT groups I might start a post oil thread. Seems odd that there are so few writers looking at such an obvious possible future.

Also didn't see anybody mention Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home I read that a while back and decided I needed to read it again. Very imaginative and far enough in the future that the references to the past are quite subtle.

I just finished Ill Wind by Kevin Anderson and Doug Beason. It's about what would happen if all of the plastic, oil, gas and synthetic fabrics went away. As usual death and mayhem occur.

Lots of great suggestions here! I would add Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald, which is a fun little tale told from a bunker deep inside the earth from a guy whose job it is to push a button to unleash a nuclear holocaust on the world should his bosses demand it.

Many people have mentioned Brave New World, I'd sugggest one of Huxley's lesser known works, Ape and Essence. It's in the form of a screenplay about scientists from New Zealand who travel to America post-nuclear war to see what's left of civilization - and boy, is it weird!

A +1 from me for

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Earth Abides is great. Usually post-apocalyptic books have a good ending, with society slowly recovering. Earth Abides does it very differently, with one of the best book endings I've ever read.

Great thread! Looking forward to checking out recommendations here.

One ss I've liked is Usher II by Ray Bradbury. Novel I didn't see mentioned is Lord of the Flies (dystopia). Postapocalyptics favorites:Freaks Amour by Tom DeHaven, O-Zone by Paul Theroux.

Emergence by David R. Palmer has my vote also. Long out of print, it is worth the effort to obtain on eBay, ABEBOOKS, used book stores, etc. The heroine's voice and spunk are captivating!

One that I don't see mentioned is Into the Forest by Hegland. I remember thinking it a very good read about, unfortunately, an all-too-possible future.

Re #69: I haven't read it yet, but from the Guardian (UK):

"Sarah Hall has won the 2006/7 John Llewellyn Rhys prize, which celebrates the best fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama from the UK and the Commonwealth, with her third novel, The Carhullan Army, a tough portrait of life in a near-future Britain after the oil runs out."

Dawn by Octavia Butler is probably my favorite currently.

>67 JustineWander: If I were mentioning more than one Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang would certainly be another I'd pick.

Well, it's not fiction, let alone sci-fi, but The World Without Us by Alan Weisman sounds incredibly interesting. Basically it's a scientific extrapolation of what would happen to the planet if humanity were to suddenly cease to exist, starting with the crumbling of our infrastructure within months to a return to nature centuries later. I definitely need to pick this one up.

I, too, have to go with 1984.

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King, it was an enjoyable read.

#69 pamur,

Not precisely a *novel*, but I recommend looking over worldwithoutoil.org -- they put on an alternate-reality liveblogging event awhile ago, an interactive fiction RPG about running out of (cheap) oil. They link to the folks/blogs who participated (US, UK, other locations). Some got quite elaborate, with video/photo blogs, linking to and conversing with each other, etc. I lost days looking through it, and I'm sure I didn't see it all.

thanks selkins (#86)
I remember seeing that a while ago (probably when it started) but I haven't looked at it lately. I will check it out again.

By the way, I just read from Analog's discussion boards that there will be a new three part serial which is a continuation for the Emergence by David Palmer.

THIS IS REALLY, REALLY GOOD NEWS.

Shade's Children - Garth Nix
the Obernewtyn Chronicles - Isabelle Carmody
The Hungry Cities sequence - Philip Reeve, starting w/ Mortal Engines.
I don't esp. like Card's "folk of the fringe" series, but they would qualify.
Richard Morgan's excellent books are future dystopias rather than post-apocalypse
JG Ballard - the Drowned World
I, too, liked The City not Long After a lot.
Sean McMullen's- Souls in the Great Machine.

The first three were targeted as YA sci-fi, but no matter...I read Canticle in jr high (we had a librarian, who, in retrospect, stocked our early 60s school library w/ a LOT of good sci-fi - certainly where i got turned on to sci-fi: Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein et al were all well represented)

Dhalgren, by Samuel R Delany, is one of the best I've ever read. Amazing.....

I guess this is the opposite of what's being asked for here, but I just finished The Traveler which is a much hyped cyber-1984 dystopian tale.

I enjoyed the book for what it was (a slick, paranoid technothriller potboiler), but would never compare it to 1984 or even refer to the book as particularly dystopian.

I recently read The Carhullan Army, which turned out to be a fine female-biased (but not, I wouldn't say, feminist) dystopia. Very much in the vein of The Handmaid's Tale.

I want to put another mention in for A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.. It covered a future after a nuclear war, where survivors in a monastery struggle to preserve the knolwedge of their forefathers. There are so many things I liked about this - the criticism of nuclear weapons, how language changed over time, how stories of the past changed, and so many other things that I won't mention in case I spoil it for anyone else who wishes to read the novel.

I have it at the top of my TBR pile...! ^^

I liked A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren. A post-apocalypse novel featuring a couple of survivors attempting (amongst other things) to protect all the books they can find for possible future generations. A nice extra is that printed on the inside of the DJ (a novel concept in itself) is a list of some of the books they managed to preserve, including... A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren. A post-apocalypse novel featuring a couple of survivors.....

Jim

this is just a bibliography of post-apocalyptic fiction that John Adams put in the back of his anthology of post-ap. short stories, Wastelands. I'm leaving off ones i remember from above....and i'll do this in pieces as i have arthritis in my hands and excessive typing is painful.
.......................
Aldiss - greybeard; hothouse
Anderson, P. Twilight world; winder of the world; vault of the ages
Anvil C., the day the machines stopped
Atwood - see above...
Ballard - drowning world; the burning world(?)
Barrett, Neal: Kelwin; Through Darkest America; Prince of Christler-Coke
Bova: test of fire
Brackett, Leigh - The long tomorrow
Brinkley, William - The last ship
Budrys, Algis - Some will not die.
Carlson, Jeff: Plague Year
Christopher, John (excellent YA, kids' sci-fi) No blade of grass; the world in winter; The empty world; A wrinkle in the skin
Crace, Jim: The Pesthouse
Dick, Phillip: Dr Bloodmoney
Dickson, Gordon: Wolf and Iron
Disch, T: The genocides
Ellison, H: Vic and Blood
Frank, Pat: Alas Babylon
Florman, Sam: The Aftermath
Galouye, Daniel: Dark Universe
Goonan: Queen City Jazz et al (good stories)
Hand, Elisabeth: Winterlong; The Glimmering
Harrison, John: The Committed Men

HAH...like a good elf he has his lists up @ amazon...here's the first.
http://tinyurl.com/6hec4j
and the 2nd http://tinyurl.com/5pf2pw
there are 2 more, if interested.

I'm currently rereading the Battlecircle Trilogy (Sos the Rope, Var the Stick and Neq the Sword) by Piers Anthony - it's actually quite good and would probably qualify for this thread. Look for the combined, unexpurgated volume.

George R Stewart's Earth Abides is pretty much the ultimate apocalyptic SF

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham almost matches it then The Kraken Wakes

Night of the Triffids was fun once I got past the naff cover, though it's Day of the Triffids - the Next Gen rather than an apocalypse story in its own right.

#98 - I agree re Earth Abides. What makes this and Day of the Triffids (and other successful fiction in this genre) so good is that they contain recognisable people with whom most readers can identify. Whereas I didn't get on too well with Canticle for Leibowitz as there were too few reference points in the characters or places for me to feel the full chilling effect that a good post-apocalyptic novel should have.

John

Surely an atomic war would remove most references to the current world we live in?

After some discussion in another thread, I've just reread the two T.J. Bass books Half Past Human and the Godwhale - both of those would qualify as well and are quite good.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
The Postman by David Brin
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
The Children of Men by P.D. James

Two of my favorites are Nature's End by Whitley Strieber and Futureland by Walter Mosley. Nature's End takes place in a future where the enviroment is so damaged by polution that you can't walk out side in the rain because of acid rain. Futureland is a collection of 9 interconected stories that take place in a world where there is a gigantic gap between the rich and the poor. Indviuals don't own anyting, everything is leased from coorporations.

#103

I remember reading "Nature's End" and thought it excellent at the time - detailed future, lots of different ideas. (I was about fourteen, so my memory might be coloured somewhat).

Another post-apocalyptic story I would like to add to the suggestions so far:

Jem - Frederik Pohl - three international groups send representatives to the planet Jem, inhabited by three intelligent races, and the story is told against the backdrop of multiple growing international crises on Earth. Astounding.

i love Mosely's detective stories, but have been sorely disappointed by his recent forays into SF.

A golden oldie from the past is ;
The Death of Grass aka (No Blade of Grass) the 1956 A novel by John Christopher (who also wrote the entertaining Tripod series).

Engine Summer by John Crowley

Wonderful post-apocalyptic novel. All of his stuff is gold, really.

9>
There's Cherryh's 40,000 in Gehenna, which should be cosidered dystopian.

The Stand of course, Swan Song by Robert McCammon, Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle, and far more recently S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire trilogy.

#102 Mushroom - I just started reading Alas, Babylon. I'm enjoying it very much.

The early work of ((J.G. Ballard)) is fantastic, especially (Hello America) and (The Drought). His later work is very much set in present day, but with a distinctly dystopian flavour.

The following titles have been mentioned but are worthy of another vote:
(Lathe of Heaven) by ((Ursula LeGuin))
Both (Oryx & Crake) and (The Handmaids Tale) by ((Margaret Atwood))
(We) by ((Yevgeny Zamyatin))
(I Am Legend) by ((Richard Matheson))
(Amnesia Moon) by ((Jonathan Lethem))
(The Pesthouse) by ((Jim Crace))

Everything by ((Philip K. Dick)) is worth reading, but I particularly love (A Scanner Darkly) and (The Man In The High Castle).

I don't think anyone has mentioned (Galapagos) by ((Kurt Vonnegut)) but this book had a serious effect on me. Vonnegut's combination of love and loathing for humanity makes for a particularly touching dystopia.

Also worth checking out is (Fiskadoro) by ((Denis Johnson)). One never finds out what the apocalyptic moment was, but he has a great vision of future primitives. And (The Stone Gods) by ((Jeanette Winterson)) is fascinating just because it's Jeanette Winterson writing scifi.

I just finished (Altered Carbon) by ((Richard Morgan)), a high octane (Neuromancer) with heavy noir influence. It may almost have pipped Neuromancer in my top 5. Maybe.

I'm currently reading (The Gone Away World) by ((Nick Harkaway)) and and loving it. Funny, fast-paced, with great nightmarish dreamscapes.

Happy reading!

Neuromancer is probably "more important" but i'd say that Altered Carbon is the better book..though i like them both.

One that I really enjoy, and haven't seen mentioned yet is The Masters of Solitude by Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin.

This is one of those stories that take place several hundred years after the apocalypse, and gives descriptions of the post human world.

The original dystopian novel, before Huxley or Orwell:
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Highly recommended.

but not before hg wells..i'd count the time machine as dystopic.

Anybody it the UK watching survivors? Now I have a challenge of naming 5 books with a similar plot.

#116

Yes, I am, it's looking good so far. I have also just read John Christopher's Empty World which is based on the same premise (but there are even fewer survivors, all teenagers).

John

I know it's only a short story but I'll mention The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
Read this as a child and loved it.
I think this is generally considered dystopian, but I personally always thought of it as post-apocalyptic too.

Not to go off topic by mentioning works outside the novel form, but some interesting takes on a post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian exist in the graphic novel form, for example:

Ghost in the Shell
Blame! in which cyborg and silicon constructs and human remnants live in a Dyson sphere gone amok - not much for dialog, but oh, the atmosphere!
Battle Angel Alita
Akira
Y: the Last Man
Watchmen
Eden: It's an Endless World by Hiroki Endo - this one is probably my favorite out of this list - highly recommended.

Also - to get back on-topic to the novel form, can anyone advise if James Blish's work in Cities in Flight (I have the omnibus edition) would be considered dystopian? This book came to mind to add to this already excellent list. Considering the economic forces at play for the spindizzy'd cities, I thought it applicable.

Edit: wanted to add to this list Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer. I loved this book even more on a re-read.

Oh, I like this thread! Yet I have very little to add (nothing?) to the impressive list already here. (I am especially impressed by the clever addition of the book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould!)

My offerings:

No Blade of Grass by John Chrisopher
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

I'm blank! I know there are others, but...

I liked Our End of the Lake by Ron Foster

It is about a solar storm causing a electromagentic pulse that shuts down technology and leaving the main charactor stranded and having to get home, then later bugging out to a lake with his family and freinds as society starts to collapse

1984 The book and yes even the movie. Major formative influence in this paranoid, cynical, closet revolutionary's life. But you didn't get that from me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it 'till the bitter end, rats and all ;-)

I don't think that anyone has mentioned Flood by Baxter. Its a story about the slow unwinding of civilization as primoridal water from below the crust breaks through and slowly drowns the world. I found it very disturbing

121>thesmellofbooks
The Dispossessed is another good one.
I like how good dystopian stories frequently address the issues we deal with today in a tongue in check way. They can be downright double good stuff and not verging on thoughtcrime at all. ;-)

Right now I'm liking The Hunger Games trilogy.

Many good titles mentioned -- of those, my top vote would be for Engine Summer by Crowley: a classic gem of a book.

Things I don't think I saw:
43,000 Years Later by Horace Coon (alien archeologists excavating Earth long after a nuclear holocaust)
Cloud Warrior and the rest of the Amtrak Wars series by Patrick Tilley (can be hard to find, in libraries anyway)
Sunset Warrior by Van Lustbader, and the three following books (I think there's a fifth book published much later, but I haven't read it)
Queen City Jazz and others in the Nanotech Cycle, by Kathleen Ann Goonan (an America partly devastated & totally transformed by runaway nanotech)
Also, Andre Norton wrote some -- like her early novel Daybreak 2250 A.D.

What a great "touchstones" list to refer to.
For me, I would like to add Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse: A Novel by Victor Gischler.
This is a not-so-serious take on the genre, yet it is still thrilling, exciting, violent at times and a hellova ride through a strange and fun world.

I just finished reading the Kevin Anderson book Ill Wind. The uncomfortable irony of finishing it while suffering from severe food poisoning has NOT escaped me.

>129 SpongeBobFishpants:: SpongeBob, that reminds me of an unfortunate bit of mis-branding I once saw. The wartime code-breaking centre, Bletchley Park (UK) has opened as a tourist attraction, and its main on-site café is called the "Crypto Café", using the trade shorthand for cryptanalysis. Unfortunately, to anyone with any connection to the water supply industry, "crypto" is shorthand for the water-borne parasite Cryptosporidium; and having once contracted cryptosporidiosis, I can tell you it's the one thing you don't want anyone thinking of in connection with a café!

A great topic. Dystopias are amongst my favourite kind of SF I realise from reading this. I've added loads of things to my wishlist.
I would again like to mention Stand On Zanzibar, only gently dystopian, but full of themes that seem very relevant to modern life.
Two of the six intertwined narratives in David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas are very good dystopian tales. They were by far the best bits of the book for me, and I found myself wishing he had developed these into longer stories.

My daughter has been reading the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, and I find to my surprise that they are post-apocalyptic. The intelligent owls that are the subject of the stories live in a world where there are no humans, but there are ruins of former human habitations. There are also contaminants in the environment that have ill effects on the owls.

Post-apocalyptic: The Road

Dystopian: Nineteen Eighty-Four

>33 Sassm:

Re: Oryx and Crake - more disturbing than The Road?

>119 chani:

Another great dystopian graphic novel is Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons' Give Me Liberty.

***

PS I forgot to mention that I'm extremely fond of Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique tales, although they are sort of post-apocalyptic sword-and-sorcery rather than post-apocalyptic SF.

Tucker's The Long Loud Silence holds up surprisingly well in my opinion. It's a semi-apocalypse, local to the US and leaving much behind. The opening chapters are typical 50's SF and unconvincing, but the arc of the main character after that is believable and chilling at times.

334 has been recommended to me fondly. It just came in the mail today so I can't comment on it's quality myself. :x It's dystopian but not post-apocalyptic.

Well, I finally took the plunge and bought a NookColor. I hate ereaders BUT in all honesty I have have altogether way too many books. In fact I have thousands, and for a renter that is just way too much of a pain to haul around. Plus we are moving to Hawaii in a few years and I don't fancy paying to have them all shipped. So, time to convert the non-collectibles to elecronic format. The funny thing is, aside from the 60 eBooks I downloaded from the Gutenberg Project, the only 2 books I have bought and paid for are post-apocalyptic/dystopian.... The Hunger Games and Dying To Live.

Asimov's Foundation trilogy is really good

'Foundation' is hardly a dystopia - unless the main feature of the dystopia is that everyone's life is as boring as the novels.

Preppers Road March by Ron Foster is part of a series called the Prepper Trilogy The book is about surviving after a solar storm has taken down the grid. Its a good post apocalyptic tale and a fast read

Post economic-apocalypse recommendations from the good folks at io9. Includes a disclaimer about the Foundation series!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is definitely my favorite dystopian novel by far!

Ariel: A Book of the Change is one of my favorites.

I recommend This Perfect Day by Ira Levin.
Underrated classic of the genre.

Player One: What Is to Become of Us by Douglas Coupland is on the margins of post-apocolyptic. It is a short novel in 5 chapters that Coupland read over the five one hour lectures of the 2010 CBC Massey lectures. So in real time he tells the story of the beginning of the end of the world over those first five hours.

Another is the loose trilogy by Emily St John Mandel consisting of Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility.

I must mention The Locked Tomb starting with Gideon the Ninth, although I know it won't be everyone's cuppa — a lot of the series depends on the audience not understanding everything that's going on, at least on the first read-through, and the POV-character of each book changes, although they are all unreliable for different reasons. If that's amenable to your tastes, I really feel this series has a little something for everyone, from necromancy to swordfights, murder mysteries to commentary on imperialism.

I also recommend Walkaway, about a post-scarcity dystopia and the ways of fighting back against it, with the caveat that it is an adult book with quite a few explicit scenes.

Here are a few more dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels that I've enjoyed over the years that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet:

The Fireman by Joe Hill
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Ariel and Elegy Beach by Steven R. Boyett
Landscape with Invisible Hand by M. T. Anderson
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

The previous post reminded me that I don't remember seeing The Postman by David Brin on this thread. Not one of the greats in this subgenre, but still readable and rather charming. It was fun skimming through this thread again. I still name Engine Summer by John Crowley as my favorite: multi-layered, beautifully written, filled with wonderful ideas & images.

Ready Player One was set in a rather unpleasant dystopia, one that I rather wished had been explored a bit more deeply.

>148 rshart3: Which in turn reminds me of the convention session I once attended which was a re-creation of the tv panel show Quick on the Draw, where cartoonists on stage have to improvise illustrations to (in this case) book title suggestions from the audience. I suggested that little-known collaboration between Robert E. Howard and David Brin, Conan the Postman...

I suppose you had to be there...

>150 RobertDay: 🤣

>150 RobertDay: LOL

Pretties and Uglies and Specials are YA dystopian for certain, SF mayybbeee. Surprisingly engaging for me, better than I expected them to be. Disturbing to me for certain.

>148 rshart3: I second your suggestion of The Postman. Great book.

>1 kjrjr7811: I remember being so floored by canticle .

>11 HoldenCarver: oh yes to on the beach

>153 elorin: Check out the "Twilight Zone" episode "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You," which has a lot of elements in common with the plot of Uglies.

Engine Summer by John Crowley
Davy by Edgar Pangborn
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

>159 boldblue: self promotion is not allowed on this thread.

>160 wbf2nd: Or in this group! Thanks for catching that, folks.

Along with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, Earth Abides, and On the Beach, I'll throw in a dark horse candidate: Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity.

Some wonderful choices above. I love this genre and see many of my favorites.
Here are others l have liked and did not see mentioned so far. Some of these are YA.

ANTHEM by Ayn Rand.
DUST LANDS, series by Moira Young -
first is BLOOD RED ROAD.
THE LINE, series by Teri Hall.
THE LAST SURVIVORS, series by Susan Beth Pfeffer - first is LIFE AS WE KNEW IT.
TOMORROW series by John Marsden - first is TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN.
THE GIVER series by Lois Lowry
BOY AND HIS DOG AT THE END OF THE WORLD by C. A. Fletcher.
DEVIL ON MY BACK and sequel, by Monica Hughes.
JOHN MATHERSON series by William Forstchen - first is ONE SECOND AFTER.
SURVIVORS by Terry Nation, also a tv series.
BOOKS OF EMBER series by Jeanne DuPrau, first is CITY OF EMBERS.
UNWIND DYSTOLOGY by Neal Shusterman,